Below is a complimentary research note from our Gaming, Lodging, and Leisure (GLL) analysts Todd Jordan and Sean Jenkins. If you are an institutional investor interested in accessing our research email sales@hedgeye.com

The Road To Recovery In Travel Industry Continues To Get Pushed Out - 5 4 2020 2 39 22 PM

Welcome to another installment of our very own Hedgeye Consumer Travel Demand Survey.

Overall, we believe that leisure travel is more likely to bounce back quicker than business transient and group travel and this survey should hopefully provide an advanced read on how consumers are thinking about their future travel plans.  Whether it’s hotel/resort, vacation rental, or ocean cruise, the survey should provide some color on where consumers might gravitate towards once the social distancing and CDC guidelines are slowly lifted. 

Consumers remain more partial towards hotels & resorts, but judging by overall travel intent, the road to a true recovery continues to get pushed out. This past week did show a slight uptick week / week for the “likely” buckets but similarly, the “unlikely” buckets ticked higher, too. More indecision amongst would be travelers appears to be the growing theme over the last two weeks, potentially as the lockdowns and social distancing measures remained in effect across most the country.

Looking ahead, the rate of change and trends within the answer sets are what we’re most keen on following. We plan to run the survey for at least another 5 weeks and hope to provide timely updates.      

consumer survey results   

Methodology of Survey

Each week, Hedgeye GLL will receive updated results from their consumer survey questions. Since the majority of GLL is centered around the theme of “travel,” we geared our survey to directly plug into the wants and desires of potential travelers on a 6-month forward basis. Our survey is strictly focused on the US consumer and aims to gauge changes in interest levels across time.

Latest Results Commentary

Hotels & Resorts

  • Slight uptick week / week for the “likely,” after last week’s abysmal reading (reading was 16% vs 16% last week, and 23% the prior week).  % for likely to book at Hotels / Resorts still remains well below its highs last month.
  • The % of neutral responses dropped to their lowest recording since we started the survey, but the difference was split evenly between “likely” travel intent and “unlikely.”
  • Net/net, the survey for Hotels / Resorts skews more negative than it has in over 5 weeks i.e. the delta between “unlikely” responses and “likely” are at 5 week highs.

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Vacation Rental

  • Reading for likely/extremely remained dead flat week / week after having dropped to its lowest level in a month just last week. (reading was 8% vs 8% last week, and 12% the prior week)
  • Neutral responses ticked slightly lower, but the weekly difference was pushed into the “unlikely” buckets.  Net/net, the survey for Vacation Rentals skews more negative than it has in over 5 weeks i.e. the delta between “unlikely” responses and “likely” are at 5 week highs, similar to the Hotel category.

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Ocean Cruise

  • Reading for likely/extremely likely remained flat week / week after posting big declines to its lowest levels since we started the survey in late March.  (reading was 6% vs 6% last week, and 10% the prior week)
  • The % of neutral responses showed a downtick this past week, but the indecision from the previous week only led to more pessimism in the most recent reading as the “unlikely” buckets reached a 7 week high in our survey.

Overall, pessimism towards cruise continues to remain elevated, likely a bad sign for future new-to-cruise demand.

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If you are an institutional investor interested in accessing our research email sales@hedgeye.com